Seeing Things | Disco Silencio!
On April 1, the gallery space at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in downtown Los Angeles will become a disco. This isn’t an April Fool’s joke — it’s “Disco Silencio!” (Silent Disco), an exhibition that runs through May 5. The architect Barbara Bestor, a SCI-Arc alumna, and her firm have designed what they call “a plywood polyhedron of hedonism.” Incorporating technologies of surface deception inspired by World War I Razzle Dazzle camouflage, which used bold graphic and anamorphic surfaces to mislead enemy bombers about the size, speed and direction of warships, the crew at Bestor Architecture built an overscaled plywood polyhedron structure in the gallery space. They covered it with a lively graphic surface embedded with fragments of mirrored disco ball, that emblem of 1980s night life, which also distort the space by refracting light. Bestor, whose firm operates under the contemporary manifesto that everyone should experience strange beauty every day, combines deception and illusion of both the serious and the frivolous kind in “Disco Silencio!”
When the polyhedron’s surfaces are unfolded, a dance floor is revealed. During the day, the disco’s reflective surfaces capture and reflect the sunlight in the space, populating it with a silent light dance. By night, the disco becomes a place for actual dancing, complete with a downloadable soundtrack by the composer Jon Huck (which is also available on Bestor Architecture’s Web site), as well as occasional guest D.J.’s. After a long day at the drafting table — or, rather, the computer screen — SCI-Arc students can unwind at the disco, which, like most clubs, also offers back rooms and dark corridors away from the action of the dance floor. Bestor will discuss the project with Eric Moss, SCI-Arc’s director, on April 8.
More source:
Seeing Things | Disco Silencio! - NYTimes.comSweet Dreams - NYTimes.com
Barbara Bestor Architecture - Exhibition
Tenerife: Places to Go and Things to See - TripAdvisor
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Submited at Thursday, March 31st, 2011 at 7:03 pm on House by dave
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